Ste Anne Hospital sees reduction in hours for ER, closure in obstetrics

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This article was published 08/12/2023 (508 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ste Anne Hospital will see a reduction in hours for its ER and a closure to its obstetrics unit.

Southern Health chief medical officer Denis Fortier said they are experiencing human resource challenges in all sectors.

“In particular here in Ste Anne at the moment, for the month of December, we’re challenged with the medical health human resources physicians basically,” he said. “We don’t have enough physicians to maintain a safe 12-hour emergency department. You may recall we had to reduce from 24 hours to 12 hours a while back because of a lack of physician resources and now it’s gotten a little bit worse for the month of December so we’re having to peel back the hours to eight hours from 12 to get through the month of December.”

The ER will now operate from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week.

Fortier said the reasons for the shortage has to do with “personal reasons” of physicians and “other obligations,” but the hope is that in January everything will be sorted out and the ER will return to operating 12 hours.

It’s the same story for the obstetrics unit. A lack of specialized doctors has caused the closure of the unit for six months.

“We believe because it’s a specialized service and specialized skills it’s going to be a little bit more challenging to find and recruit the physicians who have those kinds of skills. So, we’re giving ourselves six months in the hopes that the new graduating class coming out of various universities in the summer will shed some light on all of this,” said Fortier.

In the meantime, expectant mothers should continue to see their primary care provider and come up with a plan to give birth either in Steinbach at the Bethesda Regional Health Centre or somewhere in Winnipeg. At its peak, Ste Anne hospital was delivering around 120 babies a year, now that’s dropped to 50 to 60 babies annually.

To get the ER operating to full 24-hour capacity and the obstetrics unit open, Fortier estimated the hospital would need eight or nine doctors.

“That’s taking into consideration that we want those eight or nine physicians to take care of people in the hospital, personal care home, and be a family physician in clinics,” he said.

“I guess all I would say is, we’re in for challenging time I think over the next number of years and I hope people can be patient as we rebuild our health care human resources,” he added. “It’s not something that will be fixed tomorrow it will take years to fix. I guess I would ask for people to at least be aware of that.”